This past Sunday, Jackson Heights went all out for the 14th annual Momo Crawl: a one-day culinary extravaganza celebrating momo: pillowy, steamed dumplings packed with savory meats and vegetables and served with a spicy chili sauce.
Undeterred by the morning’s inclement weather, thousands of New Yorkers crowded Diversity Plaza and the streets of Jackson Heights — as they do every year — to not only eat their weight in $1 momo, but to celebrate Tibetan, Nepali and Himalayan food and culture.
Momo Crawl began in 2012, when Jackson Heights resident Jeffrey Orlick secured 15 restaurants to participate. In 2017, he handed the organizational reins over to Students for a Free Tibet (SFT), and the crawl has grown considerably since.
More than 8,000 people attended last year’s crawl, according to Tenzin Namgyal, Hunter College student and communications coordinator at SFT who has worked with the Momo Crawl Team since 2022.
For $15, crawlers get a passport that doubles as a map of all the participating restaurants, a guide to momo and a way to vote for their favorite bite. People can still enjoy the $1 momo without the passport. All proceeds go toward supporting SFT.
“It’s doing something that’s creating something that’s bigger than yourself,” Namgyal said.
The road to Momo Crawl
This year, 32 restaurants in Jackson Heights participated in the Momo Crawl in hopes of being crowned the best momo in town. A stretch of 37th Road was also closed off for the event, as long lines stretched outside restaurants, with some spilling more than a block down the sidewalk. People came from near and far with their friends — some were attending for the first time, and many were even trying momo for the first time.
Shruti Sharan, made the trek from Murray Hill in Manhattan. “I’ll eat as much momo as I can,” she said.
For the restaurants, though, the road to the 5-hour crawl started long before Sunday.
Bimala Shrestha, owner of Bhanchha Ghar located between 74th and 75th streets on Roosevelt Avenue, had been preparing for weeks. Her restaurant has won the Momo Crawl five times, in 2017 — the year they first participated — 2018, 2019, 2021 and 2024.
But reaching this level of momo prestige wasn’t always easy.
Shrestha came to the United States from Nepal in 2008 and spent about seven years working as a live-in domestic worker on Long Island before opening the restaurant with several partners. Although she received Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in the United States, her immigration status continued to affect her life and business.
During the pandemic, for instance, the government denied her a federal COVID relief loan because she did not have a green card or citizenship. To keep the restaurant running, she took out a personal loan of nearly $150,000. She never lost faith in herself or her restaurant, and this year Bhanchha Ghar landed on The New York Times’ list of the 100 best restaurants in New York City.
Bhanchha Ghar makes nine kinds of momo, including chicken, goat, vegetable, paneer, aloo (mashed potato), buff (buffalo), shrimp, turkey and beef. Customers can opt to have them steamed, fried or served in jhol, a flavorful broth.
“No other participating restaurant offers that many varieties,” Shrestha said, proudly.
Kelly O’Neil, a Sunnyside resident, has been coming to the crawl since 2022. She and six of her friends made their first stop of the day at Bhanchha Ghar, O’Neil’s favorite.
“You don’t get goat and shrimp momo at other places,” she said.
The first year Bhanchha Ghar participated, it sold around 1,000 to 1,200 momo. Last year, Shrestha said, they sold nearly 4,000 momo. The $1 momo price isn’t exactly lucrative. Typically, momo costs around $10 to $12 for eight momo or about $1.25 to $1.50 per momo. But for Shrestha, the exposure her restaurant gains from the crawl makes up for it. People come from all over New York — many of whom aren’t Tibetan or Nepali. Still, she says, she is surprised by the size of the crowds the crawl draws.
“They come from everywhere, oh my god,” she said.
Each year, while Shrestha says she vies for the title of best momo, she says she doesn’t like to think of the Momo Crawl strictly as a competition. She doesn’t compare her restaurant with other restaurants and prefers to focus on making momo her own way.
“Vote for me please,” she said, laughing.
How the momo is made
About a month before the crawl Shrestha begins stocking ingredients and preparing for the big day. For weeks, two Nepali women who have worked with Shrestha since 2017 work from 8 a.m. to midnight making momo in the restaurant’s basement kitchen, a space which Shrestha lovingly calls her “factory”.
Together they make different kinds of momo, while a third woman rolls the wrappers, which can be made with regular flour, buckwheat flour or millet flour. Perhaps surprisingly, the atmosphere isn’t particularly frantic — but then again, these women are battle tested when it comes to momo making. Together, they gossiped, laughed and chatted about the upcoming crawl while their hands kept moving seamlessly.
By the time the Momo Crawl rolled around, Shrestha had an upright freezer packed with huge plastic bags full of momo and stacks of sheet pans ready for Sunday’s crowds. Momo can be frozen for months without losing their taste or texture, Shrestha said, making it possible to get a head start on the thousands she expected to serve.
Ysamar Pena, who voted for Bhanchha Ghar in 2024 — a year when they clinched the championship belt — said, “It’s the seasoning, the juiciness, it’s not dry.”
“While we crawl around, something has a lasting impression, and for me, it’s Bhanchha Ghar.” Pena said she also likes the event because it gives a chance to catch up with friends while trying new food.
While Bhanchha Ghar has five Momo Crawl wins under its belt, Om Wok isn’t far behind. It has taken home the championship three times, including last year.
Sonam Yarpel, who was born in Tibet, had recently opened Om Wok’s second location on Roosevelt Avenue near 78th Street when Students for a Free Tibet invited the restaurant to participate in the crawl in 2022. And they won their first year, just like Bhanchha Ghar.
Yarpel says his momo were already known before the Momo Crawl. His first location, on Northern Boulevard in Jackson Heights, built a solid following around their food.
Still, that first year the team behind Om Wok didn’t know quite how much food they’d need to prepare, but after seeing the crowds, they had a much better idea of what to expect in subsequent years.
Yarpel said this year he prepared almost 4,000 momo.
Four people worked to prepare Om Wok’s momo for the competition: two worked inside the restaurant, while two made fresh momo in a truck outside. They made chicken, aloo, and spinach and cheese varieties three days ahead of the crawl. They decided to make the beef and chive momo the day of so they could be as fresh as possible.
“Customers always tell us that our momo tastes authentic,” Yarpel said. “They are especially happy about the large and filling inside.”
For Yarpel, the momo is about more than its size or what goes inside it. He wants people to know momo as momo, rather than simply calling it a dumpling. He emphasizes that Momo is a staple Tibetan food, and said he hopes people around the world will recognize it as its own food and understand its origins.
Aleena Gonzalez, a food content creator, attended the event for the first time this year. She said she came straight to Om Wok after a friend recommended it.
“I love the juiciness, unique flavor, and the sauce,” she said. “The event is very communal and fun, we get to explore different variations of momo and how different restaurants make them.”
There is a practical side to participating in the Momo Crawl, too.
The day of the crawl, Om Wok closed for the day. They also stopped taking Uber Eats and other online orders, giving up some of its normal business to focus entirely on the crawl.
Like Shrestha, Yarpel says the exposure at the crawl makes it worthwhile and says he has noticed more non-Tibetan or Nepali customers came by the restaurant. Eventually, Om Wok opened another location in Astoria to meet demand.
The Momo Crawl may run for only a few hours, but for the many Nepali and Tibetan business owners who participate, the effects have lasted much longer. And this year, for the Om Wok team especially, their work paid off.
On Sunday evening, after selling an astounding 4,092 momo, Om Wok was crowned the 2026 Momo Crawl winner.
